Rain Partier

Only problem is, his 99 cent kindle essay will mostly be read by those who already agree with him, and ignored or criticized unread by those who don't. Most detractors will just paraphrase the LaPierre quote of the week in any discussion anyway, from what I've seen. Not to mention the fact that you're only reaching out to people who read editorial content on a kindle to begin with.

That's all a writer can do, I guess. Good for him as a gun owner for giving it a shot, even though it's probably a 'preach to the choir' situation.

He's the last person who needs to worry about his popularity on the internet, though.

Only problem is, his 99 cent kindle essay will mostly be read by those who already agree with him, and ignored or criticized unread by those who don't. Most detractors will just paraphrase the LaPierre quote of the week in any discussion anyway, from what I've seen. Not to mention the fact that you're only reaching out to people who read editorial content on a kindle to begin with.

That's all a writer can do, I guess. Good for him as a gun owner for giving it a shot, even though it's probably a 'preach to the choir' situation.

He's the last person who needs to worry about his popularity on the internet, though.

Outhouse Editor

King recalls that the fictional schoolboy killer in his 1977 novel Rage, which was published under a pen name, Richard Bachman, resonated with several boys who subsequently rampaged at their own schools. One, Barry Loukaitis, shot dead a teacher and two students in Moses Lake, Washington in 1996, then quoted a line from the novel: "This sure beats algebra, doesn't it?"

King said he did not apologise for writing Rage – "no, sir, no ma'am" – because it told the truth about high-school alienation and spoke to troubled adolescents who "were already broken". However, he said, he ordered his publisher to withdraw the book because it had proved dangerous. He was not obliged to do so by law – it was protected by the first amendment – but it was the right thing to do. Gun advocates should do the same, he argued.

Sigh.

If other artists followed that same path, musicians such as Marilyn Manson and fiction like Death Note would no longer be available on their own.

Outhouse Editor

King recalls that the fictional schoolboy killer in his 1977 novel Rage, which was published under a pen name, Richard Bachman, resonated with several boys who subsequently rampaged at their own schools. One, Barry Loukaitis, shot dead a teacher and two students in Moses Lake, Washington in 1996, then quoted a line from the novel: "This sure beats algebra, doesn't it?"

King said he did not apologise for writing Rage – "no, sir, no ma'am" – because it told the truth about high-school alienation and spoke to troubled adolescents who "were already broken". However, he said, he ordered his publisher to withdraw the book because it had proved dangerous. He was not obliged to do so by law – it was protected by the first amendment – but it was the right thing to do. Gun advocates should do the same, he argued.

Sigh.

If other artists followed that same path, musicians such as Marilyn Manson and fiction like Death Note would no longer be available on their own.

Outhouse Editor

ssault-rifle owners statewide are organizing a mass boycott of Gov. Cuomo’s new law mandating they register their weapons, daring officials to “come and take it away,” The Post has learned.

Gun-range owners and gun-rights advocates are encouraging hundreds of thousands of owners to defy the law, saying it’d be the largest act of civil disobedience in state history.

“I’ve heard from hundreds of people that they’re prepared to defy the law, and that number will be magnified by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, when the registration deadline comes,’’ said Brian Olesen, president of the American Shooters Supply, one of the largest gun dealers in the state.

Officials estimate at least 1 million semiautomatic rifles are owned in the state, sources said.

And come April 15, 2014 — when Cuomo is expected to be running for re-election — they all have to be registered with the State Police.

But because the rifles have been legal but unregistered until now, authorities don’t know who has them or where they are located.

State officials will be nervously watching the registration figures to see how many gun owners comply, sources said.

“I believe you will have people stepping forward, saying, ‘Here I am. See? I have what you call an assault rifle. Now come and take it away,’ ’’ said a gun-rights activist and boycott organizer.

That’s exactly what state officials are worried about.

“Many of these assault-rifle owners aren’t going to register; we realize that,’’ said a Cuomo-administration source who added that officials expect “widespread violations’’ of the new law. Owners who refuse to register could face a class-A misdemeanor — punishable by up to a year in prison.

And an owner’s weapon could also be confiscated, which could be worth several thousands of dollars.

National Rifle Association President David Keene told The Post yesterday that he wasn’t surprised by the planned boycott.

“While we don’t get involved in campaigns to resist the law, I will say this: Historic experience here and in Canada shows that when you try to force gun owners into a registration and licensing system, there’s usually mass opposition and mass noncompliance,” he said. “I think it’s going to be very difficult for the governor to get mass compliance with this new law.”

Leaders of some of the state’s 300 gun clubs, gun dealers and Second Amendment organizations are organizing the boycott — and the heaviest interest is in Suffolk County, the Capital District and the Buffalo region, sources said.

The organizers point to a little-known guarantee of gun ownership contained in New York’s own “Civil Rights Law,” which was ratified the same year as the Constitution .

The state statute says the right to keep and bear arms “cannot be infringed” — stronger than the Second Amendment, which says it “shall not be infringed.’’

“They’re saying, ‘F--- the governor! F--- Cuomo! We’re not going to register our guns,’ and I think they’re serious. People are not going to do it. People are going to resist,’’ said State Rifle and Pistol Association President Tom King, a member of the NRA board of directors. “They’re taking one of our guaranteed civil rights, and they’re taking it away.’’

Outhouse Editor

ssault-rifle owners statewide are organizing a mass boycott of Gov. Cuomo’s new law mandating they register their weapons, daring officials to “come and take it away,” The Post has learned.

Gun-range owners and gun-rights advocates are encouraging hundreds of thousands of owners to defy the law, saying it’d be the largest act of civil disobedience in state history.

“I’ve heard from hundreds of people that they’re prepared to defy the law, and that number will be magnified by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, when the registration deadline comes,’’ said Brian Olesen, president of the American Shooters Supply, one of the largest gun dealers in the state.

Officials estimate at least 1 million semiautomatic rifles are owned in the state, sources said.

And come April 15, 2014 — when Cuomo is expected to be running for re-election — they all have to be registered with the State Police.

But because the rifles have been legal but unregistered until now, authorities don’t know who has them or where they are located.

State officials will be nervously watching the registration figures to see how many gun owners comply, sources said.

“I believe you will have people stepping forward, saying, ‘Here I am. See? I have what you call an assault rifle. Now come and take it away,’ ’’ said a gun-rights activist and boycott organizer.

That’s exactly what state officials are worried about.

“Many of these assault-rifle owners aren’t going to register; we realize that,’’ said a Cuomo-administration source who added that officials expect “widespread violations’’ of the new law. Owners who refuse to register could face a class-A misdemeanor — punishable by up to a year in prison.

And an owner’s weapon could also be confiscated, which could be worth several thousands of dollars.

National Rifle Association President David Keene told The Post yesterday that he wasn’t surprised by the planned boycott.

“While we don’t get involved in campaigns to resist the law, I will say this: Historic experience here and in Canada shows that when you try to force gun owners into a registration and licensing system, there’s usually mass opposition and mass noncompliance,” he said. “I think it’s going to be very difficult for the governor to get mass compliance with this new law.”

Leaders of some of the state’s 300 gun clubs, gun dealers and Second Amendment organizations are organizing the boycott — and the heaviest interest is in Suffolk County, the Capital District and the Buffalo region, sources said.

The organizers point to a little-known guarantee of gun ownership contained in New York’s own “Civil Rights Law,” which was ratified the same year as the Constitution .

The state statute says the right to keep and bear arms “cannot be infringed” — stronger than the Second Amendment, which says it “shall not be infringed.’’

“They’re saying, ‘F--- the governor! F--- Cuomo! We’re not going to register our guns,’ and I think they’re serious. People are not going to do it. People are going to resist,’’ said State Rifle and Pistol Association President Tom King, a member of the NRA board of directors. “They’re taking one of our guaranteed civil rights, and they’re taking it away.’’

3MJ

Thousands of people have rallied in Washington DC calling for stricter gun controls as they marched from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

The crowd included residents of Newtown, Connecticut, where a primary school shooting last month revived a debate over security and gun safety.

They carried banners carrying the names of gun violence victims and daubed with messages like "Gun Control Now".

Speakers urged them to lobby politicians to back gun control reform.

'Fewer dead children'Continue reading the main storyGuns in America

While some 46% of households and 29% of individuals said they owned a gun in 1990, two decades later this had fallen to 32% and 21%.DC has the most gun homicides; Connecticut has fewer than averageFor more statistics, as well as the difference between a semi-automatic rifle and pistol, visit the BBC's In statistics: Guns in the USEducation Secretary Arne Duncan said one student had died from guns every two weeks while he was chief executive of Chicago's public schools.

But he denied that gun control was about limiting firearm rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

"This is about gun responsibility. This is about gun safety. This is about fewer dead Americans, fewer dead children, fewer children living in fear," he said.

Speaking alongside lawyers and Hollywood actors such as Kathleen Turner, the speakers backed President Barack Obama's call for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as wider background checks on gun buyers.

3MJ

Thousands of people have rallied in Washington DC calling for stricter gun controls as they marched from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

The crowd included residents of Newtown, Connecticut, where a primary school shooting last month revived a debate over security and gun safety.

They carried banners carrying the names of gun violence victims and daubed with messages like "Gun Control Now".

Speakers urged them to lobby politicians to back gun control reform.

'Fewer dead children'Continue reading the main storyGuns in America

While some 46% of households and 29% of individuals said they owned a gun in 1990, two decades later this had fallen to 32% and 21%.DC has the most gun homicides; Connecticut has fewer than averageFor more statistics, as well as the difference between a semi-automatic rifle and pistol, visit the BBC's In statistics: Guns in the USEducation Secretary Arne Duncan said one student had died from guns every two weeks while he was chief executive of Chicago's public schools.

But he denied that gun control was about limiting firearm rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

"This is about gun responsibility. This is about gun safety. This is about fewer dead Americans, fewer dead children, fewer children living in fear," he said.

Speaking alongside lawyers and Hollywood actors such as Kathleen Turner, the speakers backed President Barack Obama's call for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as wider background checks on gun buyers.

3MJ

by 3MJ » Sun Jan 27, 2013 5:34 am

JAPAN — THE NANNY STATE

Gunfire rings through the hills at a shooting range at the foot of Mount Fuji. There are few other places in Japan where you’ll hear it.

In this country, guns are few and far between. And so is gun violence. Guns were used in only seven murders in Japan — a nation of about 130 million — in all of 2011, the most recent year for official statistics. According to police, more people — nine — were murdered with scissors.

Though its gun ownership rates are tiny compared to the United States, Japan has more than 120,000 registered gun owners and more than 400,000 registered firearms. So why is there so little gun violence?

“We have a very different way of looking at guns in Japan than people in the United States,” said Tsutomu Uchida, who runs the Kanagawa Ohi Shooting Range, an Olympic-style training center for rifle enthusiasts. “In the U.S., people believe they have a right to own a gun. In Japan, we don’t have that right. So our point of departure is completely different.”

Treating gun ownership as a privilege and not a right leads to some important policy differences.

First, anyone who wants to get a gun must demonstrate a valid reason why they should be allowed to do so. Under longstanding Japanese policy, there is no good reason why any civilian should have a handgun, so — aside from a few dozen accomplished competitive shooters — they are completely banned.

Virtually all handgun-related crime is attributable to gangsters, who obtain them on the black market. But such crime is extremely rare and when it does occur, police crack down hard on whatever gang is involved, so even gangsters see it as a last-ditch option.

Rifle ownership is allowed for the general public, but tightly controlled.

Applicants first must go to their local police station and declare their intent. After a lecture and a written test comes range training, then a background check. Police likely will even talk to the applicant’s neighbors to see if he or she is known to have a temper, financial troubles or an unstable household. A doctor must sign a form saying the applicant has not been institutionalized and is not epileptic, depressed, schizophrenic, alcoholic or addicted to drugs.

Gun owners must tell the police where in the home the gun will be stored. It must be kept under lock and key, must be kept separate from ammunition, and preferably chained down. It’s legal to transport a gun in the trunk of a car to get to one of the country’s few shooting ranges, but if the driver steps away from the vehicle and gets caught, that’s a violation.

Gun-rights advocates in the United States often cite Switzerland as an example of relatively liberal regulation going hand-in-hand with low gun crime.

The country’s 8 million people own about 2.3 million firearms. But firearms were used in just 24 Swiss homicides in 2009, a rate of about 0.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. The U.S. rate that year was about 11 times higher.

Unlike in the United States, where guns are used in the majority of murders, in Switzerland only a quarter of murders involve firearms. The most high-profile case in recent years occurred when a disgruntled petitioner shot dead 14 people at a city council meeting in 2001.

Experts say Switzerland’s low gun-crime figures are influenced by the fact that most firearms are military rifles issued to men when they join the country’s conscript army. As Switzerland cut the size of its army in recent decades, gun crime fell, too.

The key issue is how many people have access to a weapon, not the total number of weapons owned in a country, said Martin Killias, a criminologist at the University of Zurich. “Switzerland’s criminals, for example, aren’t very well armed compared with street criminals in the United States.”

Still, he notes that as Switzerland cut the size of its army in recent decades, gun violence — particularly domestic killings and suicides — dropped too.

Critics of gun ownership in Switzerland have pointed out that the country’s rate of firearms suicide is higher than anywhere else in Europe. But efforts to tighten the law further and force conscripts to give their guns back after training have failed at the ballot box — most recently in a 2012 referendum.

Gun enthusiasts — many of whom are members of Switzerland’s 3,000 gun clubs — argue that limiting the right to bear arms in the home of William Tell would destroy a cherished tradition and undermine the militia army’s preparedness against possible invasion.

BRAZIL — BEYOND REPAIR?

So how about a country that actually bans guns?

Since 2003, Brazil has come close to fitting that description. Only police, people in high-risk professions and those who can prove their lives are threatened are eligible to receive gun permits. Anyone caught carrying a weapon without a permit faces up to four years on prison.

But Brazil also tops the global list for gun murders.

According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime study in 2011, 34,678 people were murdered by firearms in Brazil in 2008, compared to 34,147 in 2007. The numbers for both years represent a homicide-by-firearm rate of 18 per 100,000 inhabitants — more than five times higher than the U.S. rate.

Violence is so endemic in Brazil that few civilians would even consider trying to arm themselves for self-defense. Vast swaths of cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are slums long dominated by powerful drug gangs, who are often better armed than the police. Brazilian officials admit guns flow easily over the nation’s long, porous Amazon jungle border.

Still, Guaracy Mingardi, a crime and public safety expert and researcher at Brazil’s top think tank, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, said the 2003 law helped make a dent in homicides by firearms in some areas.

According to the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department, the homicide rate there was 28.29 per 100,000 in 2003 and dropped to 10.02 per 100,000 in 2011.

Brazil wants more powerful guns in the hands of police. This month, the army authorized law enforcement officers to carry heavy caliber weapons for personal use.

Ligia Rechenberg, coordinator of the Sou da Paz, or “I am for Peace,” violence prevention group, thinks that could make things worse. She said police will buy weapons that “they don’t know how to handle, and that puts them and the population at risk.”

3MJ

Gunfire rings through the hills at a shooting range at the foot of Mount Fuji. There are few other places in Japan where you’ll hear it.

In this country, guns are few and far between. And so is gun violence. Guns were used in only seven murders in Japan — a nation of about 130 million — in all of 2011, the most recent year for official statistics. According to police, more people — nine — were murdered with scissors.

Though its gun ownership rates are tiny compared to the United States, Japan has more than 120,000 registered gun owners and more than 400,000 registered firearms. So why is there so little gun violence?

“We have a very different way of looking at guns in Japan than people in the United States,” said Tsutomu Uchida, who runs the Kanagawa Ohi Shooting Range, an Olympic-style training center for rifle enthusiasts. “In the U.S., people believe they have a right to own a gun. In Japan, we don’t have that right. So our point of departure is completely different.”

Treating gun ownership as a privilege and not a right leads to some important policy differences.

First, anyone who wants to get a gun must demonstrate a valid reason why they should be allowed to do so. Under longstanding Japanese policy, there is no good reason why any civilian should have a handgun, so — aside from a few dozen accomplished competitive shooters — they are completely banned.

Virtually all handgun-related crime is attributable to gangsters, who obtain them on the black market. But such crime is extremely rare and when it does occur, police crack down hard on whatever gang is involved, so even gangsters see it as a last-ditch option.

Rifle ownership is allowed for the general public, but tightly controlled.

Applicants first must go to their local police station and declare their intent. After a lecture and a written test comes range training, then a background check. Police likely will even talk to the applicant’s neighbors to see if he or she is known to have a temper, financial troubles or an unstable household. A doctor must sign a form saying the applicant has not been institutionalized and is not epileptic, depressed, schizophrenic, alcoholic or addicted to drugs.

Gun owners must tell the police where in the home the gun will be stored. It must be kept under lock and key, must be kept separate from ammunition, and preferably chained down. It’s legal to transport a gun in the trunk of a car to get to one of the country’s few shooting ranges, but if the driver steps away from the vehicle and gets caught, that’s a violation.

Gun-rights advocates in the United States often cite Switzerland as an example of relatively liberal regulation going hand-in-hand with low gun crime.

The country’s 8 million people own about 2.3 million firearms. But firearms were used in just 24 Swiss homicides in 2009, a rate of about 0.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. The U.S. rate that year was about 11 times higher.

Unlike in the United States, where guns are used in the majority of murders, in Switzerland only a quarter of murders involve firearms. The most high-profile case in recent years occurred when a disgruntled petitioner shot dead 14 people at a city council meeting in 2001.

Experts say Switzerland’s low gun-crime figures are influenced by the fact that most firearms are military rifles issued to men when they join the country’s conscript army. As Switzerland cut the size of its army in recent decades, gun crime fell, too.

The key issue is how many people have access to a weapon, not the total number of weapons owned in a country, said Martin Killias, a criminologist at the University of Zurich. “Switzerland’s criminals, for example, aren’t very well armed compared with street criminals in the United States.”

Still, he notes that as Switzerland cut the size of its army in recent decades, gun violence — particularly domestic killings and suicides — dropped too.

Critics of gun ownership in Switzerland have pointed out that the country’s rate of firearms suicide is higher than anywhere else in Europe. But efforts to tighten the law further and force conscripts to give their guns back after training have failed at the ballot box — most recently in a 2012 referendum.

Gun enthusiasts — many of whom are members of Switzerland’s 3,000 gun clubs — argue that limiting the right to bear arms in the home of William Tell would destroy a cherished tradition and undermine the militia army’s preparedness against possible invasion.

BRAZIL — BEYOND REPAIR?

So how about a country that actually bans guns?

Since 2003, Brazil has come close to fitting that description. Only police, people in high-risk professions and those who can prove their lives are threatened are eligible to receive gun permits. Anyone caught carrying a weapon without a permit faces up to four years on prison.

But Brazil also tops the global list for gun murders.

According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime study in 2011, 34,678 people were murdered by firearms in Brazil in 2008, compared to 34,147 in 2007. The numbers for both years represent a homicide-by-firearm rate of 18 per 100,000 inhabitants — more than five times higher than the U.S. rate.

Violence is so endemic in Brazil that few civilians would even consider trying to arm themselves for self-defense. Vast swaths of cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are slums long dominated by powerful drug gangs, who are often better armed than the police. Brazilian officials admit guns flow easily over the nation’s long, porous Amazon jungle border.

Still, Guaracy Mingardi, a crime and public safety expert and researcher at Brazil’s top think tank, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, said the 2003 law helped make a dent in homicides by firearms in some areas.

According to the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department, the homicide rate there was 28.29 per 100,000 in 2003 and dropped to 10.02 per 100,000 in 2011.

Brazil wants more powerful guns in the hands of police. This month, the army authorized law enforcement officers to carry heavy caliber weapons for personal use.

Ligia Rechenberg, coordinator of the Sou da Paz, or “I am for Peace,” violence prevention group, thinks that could make things worse. She said police will buy weapons that “they don’t know how to handle, and that puts them and the population at risk.”

3MJ

A 15-year-old girl who performed at President Obama's inauguration last week was shot dead Tuesday while hanging out with friends after school in bullet-scarred Chicago.Hadiya Pendleton -- described by family as a “walking angel” -- was standing under a canopy in Vivian Gordon Harsh Park when a gunman ran down an alley, opened fire and fled in a white car, police said.Pendleton was shot in the back but managed to run about a block before she collapsed, officer Laura Kubiak said. She died at the hospital.A 16-year-old boy was wounded in the 2:20 p.m. incident. Police said Pendleton, who had no criminal record, was probably not the intended target.

3MJ

A 15-year-old girl who performed at President Obama's inauguration last week was shot dead Tuesday while hanging out with friends after school in bullet-scarred Chicago.Hadiya Pendleton -- described by family as a “walking angel” -- was standing under a canopy in Vivian Gordon Harsh Park when a gunman ran down an alley, opened fire and fled in a white car, police said.Pendleton was shot in the back but managed to run about a block before she collapsed, officer Laura Kubiak said. She died at the hospital.A 16-year-old boy was wounded in the 2:20 p.m. incident. Police said Pendleton, who had no criminal record, was probably not the intended target.

3MJ

his weekend, I saw an ABC-7 Chicago news report about Shirley Chambers, an African American woman who lives on Chicago's Near North Side, near the site of the now-leveled Cabrini-Green housing project. She, like many African American mothers in Chicago, recently lost her son to gun violence.

Shirley Chambers' son, Ronnie, who was killed Saturday, was the fourth child she lost to gun violence. She was the mother to Carlos, LaToya, Jerome, and Ronnie Chambers. They are all gone.

Carlos was killed in 1995 by another young man with whom he'd had an argument.

LaToya was killed in April of 2000 by a 13-year-old boy who was arguing with her boyfriend.

Jerome was killed in July of 2000 when he was shot from someone in van while standing at a payphone.

Ronnie was killed this weekend when someone opened fire on a van in which he was a passenger.

They are all gone.

The Chambers family should be national news. We should also be listening to Shirley Chambers when she says, "We need tougher gun laws," and when she cries, "I can't take it anymore."

I can't take it anymore.

Those who resist meaningful gun reform, which necessarily must include higher barriers to handgun ownership, demanded of Shirley Chambers the sacrifice of all four of her children, in service to their right to own weapons designed to kill people.

The gun lobby and its fervent supporters would vehemently deny what they would certainly regard as my cruel mischaracterization of their position. But that is the effective result of an obdurate resistance to meaningful gun reform: People will die.

All the soundbites about how it isn't guns who kill people, and all the victim-blaming that has been and will be heaped on Shirley Chambers and her children, and all the rationalizations about people with mental illness, and all the othering of poor black people who live in cities, and all the sanctimonious hand-wringing about "cultural degradation," and all the excuses and justifications and cynical rhetorical flourishes in the world will not change this fact: Shirley Chambers' children are dead. All of her children are dead.

We are expected to regard that fact as an acceptable by-product of the virtually unlimited right to own guns.

Four lives lost, and a mother's life torn to pieces. Collateral damage so the most fearful people in the country — people whose privilege disproportionately insulates them from the very real threats Chambers and her family have faced — can stockpile deadly firearms, and the makers of those deadly firearms can pocket enormous profits.

3MJ

his weekend, I saw an ABC-7 Chicago news report about Shirley Chambers, an African American woman who lives on Chicago's Near North Side, near the site of the now-leveled Cabrini-Green housing project. She, like many African American mothers in Chicago, recently lost her son to gun violence.

Shirley Chambers' son, Ronnie, who was killed Saturday, was the fourth child she lost to gun violence. She was the mother to Carlos, LaToya, Jerome, and Ronnie Chambers. They are all gone.

Carlos was killed in 1995 by another young man with whom he'd had an argument.

LaToya was killed in April of 2000 by a 13-year-old boy who was arguing with her boyfriend.

Jerome was killed in July of 2000 when he was shot from someone in van while standing at a payphone.

Ronnie was killed this weekend when someone opened fire on a van in which he was a passenger.

They are all gone.

The Chambers family should be national news. We should also be listening to Shirley Chambers when she says, "We need tougher gun laws," and when she cries, "I can't take it anymore."

I can't take it anymore.

Those who resist meaningful gun reform, which necessarily must include higher barriers to handgun ownership, demanded of Shirley Chambers the sacrifice of all four of her children, in service to their right to own weapons designed to kill people.

The gun lobby and its fervent supporters would vehemently deny what they would certainly regard as my cruel mischaracterization of their position. But that is the effective result of an obdurate resistance to meaningful gun reform: People will die.

All the soundbites about how it isn't guns who kill people, and all the victim-blaming that has been and will be heaped on Shirley Chambers and her children, and all the rationalizations about people with mental illness, and all the othering of poor black people who live in cities, and all the sanctimonious hand-wringing about "cultural degradation," and all the excuses and justifications and cynical rhetorical flourishes in the world will not change this fact: Shirley Chambers' children are dead. All of her children are dead.

We are expected to regard that fact as an acceptable by-product of the virtually unlimited right to own guns.

Four lives lost, and a mother's life torn to pieces. Collateral damage so the most fearful people in the country — people whose privilege disproportionately insulates them from the very real threats Chambers and her family have faced — can stockpile deadly firearms, and the makers of those deadly firearms can pocket enormous profits.